


Behind the Ballads

by Ramzes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 02:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9300509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramzes/pseuds/Ramzes
Summary: Jenny of Oldstones and her prince were a favourite theme for singers, their romance making them larger than life. What were they like in life? A Duncan the Small two-shot.I guess one could call it canon-divergent. Or not.





	1. Thrice

All that mattered came in three.

Three heads had the dragon. Three times had his father been offered the crown before he accepted. Say something thrice, and people knew you meant it.

"He's of the First Men, two times over," people murmured and while in the beginning, he had bristled at the implication of backwardness and yes, honouring the old gods, as he grew up, he found himself fascinated with the times and rituals of the First Men. Fascinated – and scared.

"But your House has produced dark-haired ones while House Dayne looks Valyrian," he had used to insist to his mother. "How is it possible that they were both First Men?"

"You and Jaehaerys look quite different and yet you're both my sons," Betha would answer reasonably.

When into his cups, his uncle Daeron often looked at him and smiled with no joy. "You're of the First Men, Duncan, are you not? Do you feel it?"

Sometimes, Duncan did. Sometimes, the dead godswood at Raventree Hall whispered to him but he could never make their words out. The volcano at Dragonstone murmured threats that he misliked, although it never delivered.

"I do hope that when this Prince That Was Promised comes, he'd obliterate this hellish fire," his aunt Rhae once said. Like Duncan, she didn't trust the volcano at all.

"Is he going to come?" Duncan wondered. "Aunt Rhae? Uncle?"

"He will," Aemon said. "The prophecy is a very old one."

"But is it true?"

"I think it is. Daenys the Dreamer's was," was Aemon's reply but when Duncan wished to know more, he said he had to be somewhere else.

"Oh yes, it'll come true," Daeron assured him. "I can see the world exploding in ice and fire… the wall so thick that it isn't even clear anymore, the great castles reduced to rubble, the stones of old ruined ones rising back to life and the dragons with them, dancing. It will happen… soon."

But whenever he said anything about this particular vision, he was always so drunk that he couldn't remember anything about it in the morning, or at least said that he couldn't.

"Do you not see it, Duncan?" he asked sometimes. "Are you of the First Men or the dragons?"

_Both_ , Duncan thought as he listened to the weirdwoods or the volcano or leafed through a book he had borrowed from Jaehaerys. Old prophecies did hold some strange appeal.

Perhaps the Prince That Was Promised would be born from his own line. How else? He'd be _king_ one day and while his brothers were as much the blood of both dragons and First Men, they didn't _belong_ to the First Men. Weirdwoods didn't speak to them.

"Enjoy your ravens," Jaehaerys told him on their progress south, a few years into their father's reign. "I have the feeling that Lady Jocelyn won't like them very much and this time next year, you'll be wed to her."

"And you think I'll do her bidding?" Duncan snapped but Jaehaerys didn't look impressed.

"She strikes me as a lady who'll have her own way," he said. Jaehaerys liked Jocelyn – and it was easy for him to do so. He wasn't expected to wed this pale, bloated girl with pimpled face and thin lips. Though where he had gotten the idea that she was imperious, Duncan could not fathom. She was extremely reserved and silent. So was he, in a way, so he didn't appreciate the thought of sitting day after day with someone who wouldn't talk to him and he wouldn't talk to in return. But fortunately, there was no requirement for him to love his queen. Just honour her. Which he would do.

* * *

Until he met her. Jenny with flowers in her hair. Jenny who bathed in the river and offered him the bunch of flowers that she had just picked up without any false modesty. "Come again before dusk," she told him, "and I'll show you something truly wonderful. But take care to wear something simpler," she added, giving his garb a critical look. "Clothes are expensive enough nowadays and you might ruin this nice one."

Duncan nodded. His tunic was plain enough, he thought, but his ideas of plain didn't actually coincide with hers. Not that she knew who he was. And he preferred to keep it this way.

"Where are you going?" his father asked as he tried to creep away unnoticed as the court prepared to make Harrenhall its home for the next week or so.

"Oh! I'm just going to have a look around," Duncan said casually. King Aegon's eyes went over his son's brown garb but he wasn't one to scold him for looking… well, like a peasant. Or the son of a moderately successful merchant.

Jenny waited for him at the shore of the pool that might be bright blue in the day but at dusk led a life of its own, all rising darkness, loud frogs, and souls of unfortunate people who had lost their lives in its depths. She took him by the hand and led him down a path in the side of the abandoned hill, so narrow that they couldn't walk abreast, and so undisturbed by human feet that it was almost invisible. He almost screamed when, at a sudden turn, he found himself staring into… nothingness. A deep gorge. How many had this path led to their deaths? Jenny's hand stuck behind her, impossibly white in the twilight, and he grabbed it. "Are you trying to kill us both, or what?" he asked, fear turning to fury, and she laughed.

"You're safe, as long as you're with me," she said. "And the gods watch over us. It's their place, from the foot of the hill to the sky and above."

He had the uncomfortable feeling that she didn't mean the Seven. His own mother entered Baelor's sept and observed all worship that a queen really couldn't go without but her gods weren't his. They were Jenny's. A thrill went through him – not an unpleasant sensation.

"Look!" Jenny cried. "Here they are!"

A lonely figure hovered over them. Another one shot from a hole in the hill – a cave? – and joined it. A third and a fourth, and then the entire sky turned into black lace of wings, and Duncan shook his head. "Bats?" he asked, revolted.

"Aren't they lovely?" Jenny asked, tugging him left, and then they were on a broader patch of flat land, and here, with the ground safely under his feet and her fascinated face shining like a white spot, her dark eyes huge and the bats shrieking, he thought he could perhaps find some beauty in them. Jenny took a fistful of berries from her pocket and threw them down in the precipice and Duncan watched, hypnotized, as the first bat shot down to catch them.

"You're a boy from the town, aren't you?" Jenny asked. "You aren't accustomed to such wonders. Care not, I will teach you."

"I can't wait," Duncan said, knowing that he'd come back to this strange, wild girl.

At the time, he didn't think once of his betrothed, with her awkwardness and the thin lips.

* * *

Then, he started thinking of her – when Jenny sat down in the grass next to him, chattering about old stones and old gods, and her own supposed glorious ancestors. What fascinated him about her was her liveliness and ease. She took pride in the lineage she touted so proudly but she could laugh at the idea of how her ancestors found out the wonders of the first privy. She talked about the people mocking her and calling her a wilding without hatred but rejoiced in her own peculiarities – could she not be peculiar, after all? Her parents had died soon after her birth, leaving her in the care of a woman locals called witch and Duncan wholeheartedly agreed. What he didn't expect was that she'd turn out to be a _real_ witch but when he saw her listening to the trees, he did.

"Oh, she's a woodwitch," Jenny said lightly when he asked her about it. "And she thinks I have a part to play in shaping the future of Westeros. Perhaps I'll be queen one day!" And she laughed. "Can you imagine this? Jenny of Oldstones! Queen of Westeros!"

"Yes," Duncan said slowly. "In fact, I can."

Once having entered his head, the idea would not leave it. He knew that prophecies were a thing that existed, no matter the fools who derided them. Jenny was destined to play a part far greater than this of the weird local girl. And the things that mattered came in three.

Jenny was of the blood of the First Men.

Thrice.

And his betrothed's lips were thin and pale and she preferred to sit silently, all too aware of her own deficiencies.

The prophecy was of the Prince Who Was Promised, not the Bastard Who Was Promised but he had more sense than saying it to his father. Aegon wanted no part of visions and prophecies – he believed that they had killed his brother and contributed to his uncle's death because a man who sought all answers in thick books would lose the general good health that could help him repel the rotting in the lungs. Of course he would. He braced himself for coming clean to Jenny about lying to her – he expected that she wouldn't take his deception lightly, and he was right.

* * *

What he had expected not was his father's visceral reaction when he brought the subject forward, very carefully. Now, it dawned on him that for all his love of smallfolk, King Aegon did consider himself so above them that the idea of marrying his son and heir to one of them was simply intolerable. "Make her your mistress if you must," was the first sentence not of pure ire coming from his mouth, and Duncan shook his head.

Not the Bastard Who Was Promised.

It was fate.

He had not expected Lord Baratheon's reaction either.

"By the Seven, why?" he asked in disbelief. "I gave up the crown!"

Oh how it burned him to know that he had to give up what was his to make the salvation come true! Should it come to a war, also?

"You still dishonoured his daughter." There was no mercy in his father's eyes like there had been none in Ormund Baratheon's when he had left court after four years spent here. Duncan hoped that one day, the two of them would be able to renew their friendship but he was starting to feel that it might be a hard task indeed.

* * *

"Ser Duncan?" he yelled when his father's idea of the single combat became clear. "I won't have it! How did it come to Ser Duncan? Why Ser Duncan?"

His father's eyes were stone. "Because I need us to win," he stated flatly, not even trying to disguise his assessment of his son's chances. "And I'm sure he will. Lord Lyonel will show no mercy if he prevails but Ser Duncan won't kill _him_. The last thing the realm need is one of the two of you dying."

Duncan turned a pleading eye to his mother but Betha returned his look with a stony face. "I will be known as the one who fled," he said, softly this time.

"You're already known as the one who shirked his duty," the Queen reminded him without sympathy and so it was without sympathy that he saw Lord Lyonel's defeat, any guilt he might have felt before the man fading as he had to sit there and pretend that it was a sign of royal majesty that the Lord Commander fought his combat for him.

When he heard the terms of the peace, his laughter died. "You can't send Rhaelle there!" he yelled, horrified. "They'll tear her apart."

"This is no concern of yours." His mother's eyes were dry but red, the skin of her face taut. She had wept. "You lost your right to pretend care when you refused to give up a single girl for the realm, after you witnessed how many young men never returned to their girls to save our throne."

Her voice was clipped and cold, her eyes piercing, full of animosity and blame that he fully deserved. From now on, it would be like this. Just for a moment, he wondered… What if he was wrong?

Thrice. His grandfather and Dyanna Dayne. His father and the Blackwood lady. It didn't make sense for the pattern to be cut in time. None.

"Will you be good to her?" he asked Ormund when, breaking his pride, he went to talk to him after it became clear that Ormund only cared to escort his betrothed to his home and not rekindle old friendships.

Ormund flashed him a grim smile. "I will treat your sister better than you did mine," he promised. And then, before Duncan could feel relieved, "I will wed her and bed her."

With this, he spun around and strode away, Duncan's impulse to catch up with him dying the very moment it had been born. Unlike Lord Lyonel, Ormund was a reasonably… well, reasonable boy. Duncan had relied on him to help smooth the ruffled feathers. Instead, Ormund had cut off his fostering with the King's Hand on his own accord and left court before his father could even summon him. The months in between had not cooled his cold rage and Duncan mourned their friendship and feared for Rhaelle.

"Don't try to tell me you're sorry," his father said sharply. "I don't want to hear it."

So Duncan didn't and the unspoken guilt stayed in his chest like a war wound.

"I'll make up for it," Jenny promised. "I _will_ make you happy."

_Do it_ , he thought. _Please do._ But even this felt suddenly soiled, for despite his love for her he had not told her of the prophecy she was to bring about. He drew her close and as her scent overwhelmed him, the thought of his lucky escape from the uncomfortable silence and the thin lips flashed through his mind, just for the length as a breath. "Give me a son, my flower," he whispered. "Give me a prince."

 


	2. In the Grip of Summer Long

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Baelorfan and Riana1, for commenting!

 There never came a child. Jenny thought there was, in the first year, and she was quick to tell him but they decided to wait before summoning the Grand Maester, and a good thing it was because just a week later, her moon blood arrived. Two years later, Duncan thought she might be hopeful again but she didn’t tell him and he didn’t want to ask. But then, her hope died – if there had been a hope at all. Could he have been wrong?

 No.

 All things worthy came in three.

 A long summer persisted soaking the rains in before twilight could reach them. In the South, the crops wizened and died and the heat was too great even for the people accustomed to it. Then, the drought started creeping in the rest of the realm. A quarter of the crops in the West were hit by it. The Reach demanded help to deal with their own losses and since the King’s concessions to them after Jaehaerys and Shaera’s elopement, they seemed to feel they were entitled to them.

 Duncan felt permanently caught in the grip of this merciless, lifeless sun and he didn’t know why. He had hated waking up every morning to attend the meetings of the Small Council and especially spending many hours of every day reading boring parchments and even more boring archives to be able to contribute with well-thought over suggestions or find reasons why others’ suggestions might not be right and now he didn’t have do to it. He rejoiced in having the comfortable rhythm of his life undisturbed by any demands. For about a year. Then, it slowly started feeling like being unneeded. Sometimes, Jenny’s chatter and sunny disposition made him cheerful as they had before but somewhere in their shared road, they had lost that sunlight quality that lit his day. Could it have been their exclusivity that had made them so special? He had thought that her acceptance at court would make him feel fulfilled but while it pleased him and filled him with joy, it also highlighted the differences between her and the ladies born. She didn’t know how to converse. As much as she tried to study courtly manners, there was always a little lapse or two that embarrassed him, lowered her spirits, and made him hate himself for feeling embarrassed. He hated attending official functions and watching her sit silently.

 Even in the private life of the royal family, things did not look any better. His father liked Jenny and she liked him back but his mother, with her politeness and efficient care of everything, had not forgiven. The missing chair where Rhaelle should have been marked the wall between Betha and the two of them. Duncan knew that it would come down more easily when they presented his mother with a grandchild but it was not happening.

 Outwardly, all was fine. They were accepted at court. They lived in the style he was used to. The singers memorized their love in tens of ballads. And no one knew that this style oppressed Jenny. She hated the restrictions demanded from the wife of a king’s son. But they could hardly live like a peasant couple over the ruins of Oldstones.

 Two years into the marriage, Duncan was already brimming with desire to do something. But he could hardly be given any position of authority in his father’s court. That would enrage the great Houses even more when there were still feathers to be smoothed. For a while, he had his hopes for the position of commander of the gold cloaks but Ser Duncan put this idea to death pretty quickly. “Are you going to deprive Ser Hubar from the post?” he asked, staring the King straight in the eye. “I wouldn’t do it in your place.”

 So Duncan was forced to live like the poor relation with nothing of his own and nothing to contribute. He threw himself in his everyday practice with even greater passion, became a constant presence in all tourneys, met rivals who fought him fiercely and others who fell before him to get into his good grace… They never did. His fame as a great knight rose daily.

“You’ll go and represent the family  in the celebrations about Vaella’s boy’s first nameday,” his father told him one day and while Duncan’s first impulse was to refuse, he could see that if someone of the family had to be there, there wasn’t much of a choice. Jaehaerys’ health was in decline again. Daeron was too young. Everyone knew that Rhaelle was a token of goodwill and not a true representative of their House. He had no wish to go because he’d meet either Lord Lyonel or Ormund. But perhaps he’d meet Rhaelle as well, for the first time in five years.

 “It saddens me to see Vaella like this,” he said softly, for his cousin had not always been feeble of mind, stuttering, unable to use her limbs properly, and Aegon sighed.

 “I know but you have to. We can’t afford any more talks that we’re deliberately offensive to the Houses of the realm.”

 They had not been _deliberately_ offensive. They just wanted to be happy – and in Duncan’s case, do their duty, although people did not know it and he was starting to suspect that he might have been wrong.

 “You must see what’s going on there,” Aegon went on. “Word has it that Maegor has been sent to Dorne and I don’t like it. Your aunts aren’t pleased with the increased power I had to give the Reach and Lord Lyonel has been visiting Summerhall too often for my liking.”

 Duncan swallowed. “Surely Queen Aelinor wouldn’t…”

 “I believe she wouldn’t do anything to harm the realm,” Aegon said, rubbing his forehead. “Your grandfather  trusted her and he left Vaella and Maegor in her care and you know about our differences.  For twenty years, we thought her as timid as a mouse and she took us all by surprise.”

 “If we send Aunt Daenora to meet the boy?” Duncan offered without much hope. The Lord knew what Aerion had done to his lady wife but after his death she had been quick to remarry, never showing any interest in seeing her son. She could hardly be expected to counterbalance Aelinor’s influence over the boy.

 Surely Aelinor was too old to want to act the Queen Mother? But as his father had said, she had surprised them once.

 “Look at the last letter from our spies at Summerhall,” Aegon went on, pushing the parchment into his son’s hand. “And don’t you dare laugh.”

 Duncan’s eyes went over the lines. They seemed quite normal to him. _“The Queen Dowager was at Storm’s End again. She had long conversations with Lord Lyonel and looked content with them but I couldn’t learn what they talked about…”_

And then, another handwriting. _“Dear Aegon, with Lord Lyonel I talked about the ways to collect taxes painlessly – I guess you would have loved to join us for this one, - about the white doe men swore they spotted in the Kingswood, about Queen Visenya’s conquest of the Vale of Arryn, about the halfwit way you go about your admirable aims, about my failed attempts to lure his pastry-cook away from him and Lady Margrat, and the future feasts I’ll arrange for him and his men in Summerhall when they visit me during a hunt because I love having company in my dotage.”_

Duncan stared at the last few words and despite his good intentions, burst out laughing.

 “Just like your mother!” the King muttered.

 “But surely she can’t be plotting against us if she’s sending us such mischievous missives?” Duncan reasoned out.

 “I think she isn’t. But I want to make sure, so you’re going.”

* * *

 

 Duncan only needed one look at the face of the cousin he hadn’t seen in eleven years to know how wrong his father had been. The consumption would claim Maegor Targaryen in a year, if this long, and while Duncan felt sad for the cruel loss of a life so young, a hidden, ugly part of him was relieved that soon, there would be one threat left for the stability in the Seven Kingdoms.

 “I am not trying to discredit your father,” the old Queen told him straightforwardly as he wondered where to look at. “I’m trying to pave the way for a future reconciliation after your romantic exploits and those of your siblings.”

 “Is this the reason you arranged Vaella’s marriage to a lord and Jocelyn Baratheon’s into your own kin without consulting my father first?” he retorted.

 Aelinor shrugged. “I didn’t need his permission about Vaella,” she reminded him. “Your grandfather could have entrusted her to the Iron Throne but he didn’t. And do you really think Lord Lyonel would have taken well to Aegon having a say into Jocelyn’s marriage _again_?”

 No, Duncan didn’t think so. With great relief, he thought he’d love to tell his father that his fears about Aelinor had been unfounded. She was indeed doing her best to heal the wounds of the realm and no matter how much she tried to hide it, she was heartbroken over the impeding death of the boy she had  raised from an infant.

 Aegon’s fears about Rhaelle, though…

 Now fifteen years old, she had grown very beautiful and very distant. She looked uncomfortable in black and red. She avoided him, keeping to Vaella and Queen Aelinor. She only spoke the smallest amount of words to him, the ones she could not avoid saying.

“Don’t you want to know how our parents are?” he asked her in the very first day of their meeting, and she gave him a look of polite interest.

 “I’m abreast with the news,” she said. “I hope they’re as well as they were the last time they wrote me.”

 “You never write them back,” he pointed out. “Or any of us. Do you even wear the bolts Shaera sends you?”

 “No,” Rhaelle replied coolly. “I have found them some better use as I will any future gifts any of you sends me. You entrusted me to House Baratheon, so it’s House Baratheon who should tend to my needs now.”

 Shame burned on his cheeks. “I didn’t know it would come to this, Rhaelle.”

 “Duncan,” she said coldly, “save it for someone who cares. Or even better, say nothing and tell Mother that I’m fine. I’m sure it will be almost as comforting to her as having me there.”

 “I’ll try to convince Lord Baratheon,” he promised, painfully aware that he had no idea what he was promising and that whatever it was, he’d not be successful.

 Rhaelle laughed coldly, silverly. “Convince him?” she asked. “You think I want you to convince him about anything? Why should I?”

 Startled by the increasingly louder tone of their exchange, the little boy on the sofa at the other end of the room stirred up awake. Rhaelle hurried over to take him but he didn’t want to stay in her lap – he was holding his hands towards his mother, Vaella, although Rhaelle stayed next to them because Vaella couldn’t be trusted not to drop him. Looking at them, Duncan was startled by something in his cousin’s eyes, something like sad intelligence, a tortured shadow of her once bright mind. _Even Vaella has a child,_ he thought. _She who cannot mother on her own._ Shaera was now growing big with her first. He and Jenny were the only ones who were so deprived, it seemed.

 

* * *

After the celebrations, he accompanied his sister and Ormund back to Storm’s End. Rhaelle did not want him to but he had promised their parents to see in person how Lord Lyonel treated her. The man hadn’t come, so Duncan had to go. Rhaelle’s retaliation was to take Jocelyn Penrose with her. They spent much of their time together, so unless Duncan was ready to risk meeting his onetime betrothed, he had no way to see Rhaelle for a few words.

 The Lady of Storm’s End was going back to health after being incapacitated after a long fever. Duncan could say that she didn’t want him there either but it was Lord Lyonel’s fault. If he hadn’t poisoned Rhaelle’s mind against them, Duncan would have had no reason to come. In the rare moments when he was ready to be honest, he admitted to himself that his desire to blame Rhaelle’s distance on Lyonel was driven by hope. Lyonel would not live forever and if it was indeed him behind it, the rift could be mended.

 The summer kept shining – and burning. From the walls of Storm’s End, Duncan watched the hailstorms destroying the crops. How Jenny would have wept if she could see this!

 “Do we have enough in the warehouses to last next year?” Lord Lyonel turned to his steward after the third hailstorm in two weeks. The man confirmed that they did.

 “But we must find a way to bring the water to the fields,” Jocelyn said. “Even if the warehouses last our smallfolk for the next year, the next one promises to be even hotter. The crops might dry up before they are even ripe. Coutan sent men in Dorne to ask how they fare but he had to leave for Essos before they brought back an answer. They must know a way, else they would have all died of starvation long ago.”

 She wasn’t stupid, this Lady Jocelyn, Duncan had to admit. And in her early twenties, she was so different from the girl he had been betrothed to that in the beginning, he had not even recognized her. She was now graceful, her skin smooth and creamy, her lips just as thin as they had used to be but somehow, now that only accentuated her air of a sensitive, expressive being. With deep shame, he had to admit that had she been like this five years ago, things might have turned out differently. And yet, while Jocelyn’s lack of beauty had played a part back then, it was her mind now that made him listen to every word she said, his mind actively making unwanted comparisons. Jocelyn was a real lady, one who could run a big household effortlessly – why, there were letters from the Parchments informing her of the comings and goings there twice a week! – and solve the problems for her father in her mother’s absence. More than once, Duncan stopped nearby to watch as she and Rhaelle received suppliants together. Not all of them left pleased and Duncan approved of that – it was impossible for a good ruler to appease everyone. They sat with the steward every day and discussed matters about the castle – just the way he had imagined things would be once his family accepted Jenny, when he had still thought that she’d be his queen.

 “By the Seven, girls, I don’t know if I should pity your men or envy them!” Lord Lyonel would boom out. “You’d make fine lords and in one castle, there’s only room for one.”

 “Like here,” Rhaelle would smile at him impudently. “In Lord Margrat’s castle.”

 He’d glare at her but Duncan was hearing from other people as well that it was Lady Margrat who ruled her husband and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

 Of course, no one would say it _to_ him. Here, he was just tolerated – barely. In the Stormlands, people loved Jocelyn as much as those in the Crownslands loved Jenny. But he heard the rumours from his men – about Rhaelle and the woman from a nearby village who was Ormund’s mistress, the rogue that he was, about Lord Lyonel and Lady Margrat, about the quarrels marring Jocelyn’s married life…

 “Are you blaming me for her misery as well?” he asked one day as Jocelyn was summoned to her mother’s solar and Rhaelle was alone in the gardens.

 His sister gave him a long look. “No,” she said, surprising him. “That’s on her husband, fully.”

 It was strange to think that he and the husband of the woman he had rejected had the same problem – the lack of a child…

 This night, a fire broke out brought over by a horrible summer storm. Duncan shot from his bed, dressed himself haphazardly, and when he rushed out, he saw, for the first time in his life, a wind so fierce that it extinguished the torches and at the same time fed the horrible torch that led everyone to the servants’ quarters.

 The clouds were so thick that neither stars nor moon were visible. Just the fire. The evil spirits populating the entire shore must have gathered to revelry. It truly looked like invisible fingers were tearing the hair of the people running  outside…  

 The buckets of water were… nothing. Droplets against glowing copper. A hiss… and there were none…

 “Is anyone left inside?” Lord Lyonel roared over the screams of people and the howl of fire, and Duncan thought the answer must be no, for no one rushed to the windows and doors to yell and fall to the barricading fire…

 “The horses!” a woman screamed and now Duncan realized that some of the sounds he had been hearing were not human voices.

 By the time they negotiated the distance between the servants’ quarters and the stables at the other side of a tall wall, the fire had outdistanced them. Knowing the general location of things in castles, Duncan thoughtfully rushed to a nearby low building and grabbed the first axe he saw.

 “Open a tunnel for the horses to pass, yes!” Lord Lyonel roared and joined him, and then Ormund shouted, “Are you mad? Go back!” and when Duncan looked up, he saw Jocelyn hanging on the bolt of the door, the flames licking closer from both sides.

Lyonel didn’t hear but Duncan dropped the axe and grabbed the bucket of water from the hands nearest to him to rush with it for the door. He and Ormund emptied their buckets at the same moment and Jocelyn finally managed to throw the door open.

 Duncan’s relief was short-lived: with her face twisted in primal horror and her mouth opened into a neverending scream, the young woman didn’t dash for safety but ran straight inside. Duncan saw her lift the bar of the first stall up and jump up to avoid being trampled.

 “I’ll go!” he yelled. “You help with the fire!”

 Before Ormund could protest, he was already inside, in the suffocating smoke and the burning hell rising from the bottom. He had grabbed a blanket lying nearby and doused it in water, so he now threw this over his own head and hers when he came near. Unfortunately, she clearly decided that it was a horse trying to trample her, so she threw herself in the other direction and he had to catch her. “Damn you!” he yelled. “Do you not see that I’ve come to save you?”

 She didn’t hear him in the noise but she saw him and went quiet, letting him cover her with the blanket.  He pushed her against the wall and gestured at her that she should stay flat. When she nodded that she understood, he pressed himself flat as well and tried to have a look at all the horses pushing for the fresh air. With the end of his eye, he noticed that Jocelyn had closed hers, finally letting fear get the better of her. He grabbed her arm because he could feel her impulse to push for the air and out of the chaos of bodies as well.

 The fire went down before all the horses could escape. Later, he was told that the two of them had been found staring mindlessly forward, not truly realizing what had happened.

 “We had a great luck,” Rhaelle told him late in the afternoon when he finally woke up. She was now friendlier to him and relieved that he was fine, although her face was still marred by the fear of last night. “Only two people died. Of course, we were prepared for the eventuality of fire but one never knows…”

 “A great luck indeed,” Duncan agreed and tried not to notice the tinkle of another hailstorm right before their windows.”

 “Shaera’s babe has arrived,” Rhaelle went on. “Last night. A boy. Aerys, they’ll name him.”

 Duncan’s  joy was mixed with sad envy. “May the Seven keep him,” he said. “He’ll be our king one day.”

 Rhaelle nodded. “May they protect him,” she agreed but even this joy could not make them family again and Duncan knew who was to blame.

 Later this day – it was already night, in fact – he was surprised to see the bandage swelling Lady Jocelyn’s left sleeve. He had not seen the fire getting to her.

 “I’ll be fine,” she said curtly. “Thank you for coming after me, though. The fire did not finish me off but I lost my mind in there. The horses would have trampled me over.”

 Somehow, after last night, it did not feel uncomfortable to look at her without hiding. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “What were you saving? Your lord father’s property? Your reputation of a mistress and leader? What the smallfolk  had managed to bring to fruition?”

 She was slowly shaking her head. “No. The living souls.”

 He was staring at her. “You would have made a great queen,” he said and then he realized just how malapropos his words were.

 “A better queen than you would have made a king and this is the trouble,” Jocelyn said without inflection.

 “I didn’t want to hurt you, my lady.”

 “No,” she agreed flatly. “You just wanted to be rid of me. Do not insult either of us by trying to deny it, Your Grace,” she warned. “I am neither blind nor stupid. I could see what you thought about me.”

 “Things have changed, my lady,” Duncan said, wondering why he was making them worse. He had heard her weep when she was alone with Rhaelle and curse her stupid heart for loving so fiercely.

 He couldn’t be wrong about what he saw: she drew back and the feeling that came to her eyes was undoubtedly fear. Then, something else pushed it away. Duncan tried to understand what it was but then his time for thinking was over because she rose from her chair, came around the table, and kissed him.

 

* * *

Almost immediately after leaving Storm’s End, he started regretting those three weeks of love that was forbidden. That was no love at all. That was his first straying from Jenny’s bed and no matter how often he told himself that a fling outside the marriage was expected from princes, it did not help. The fact that Jocelyn’s husband had arrived the day before his own leaving did not improve his temper because despite his regrets, he now felt ridiculously possessive of her and didn’t like the fact that her husband was young and handsome, and clearly smitten with her. Her pretenses of joy could not make him glad either, although he knew she had little choice in the matter.

 “Rhaelle is happy,” he told his parents and his guilt rose when he saw how his mother’s face lit up. He wished he could spare her the rest of the tale. Over his time at Storm’s End, he had come to believe that Rhaelle was lost to them.

 The sight of the babe in the silver cradle made his breath catch. He had never seen a babe so lovely and he told Shaera this much. Envy rose in him again, envy and anger, and to this regret added up when he saw how gaunt and haunted Jenny had become in his absence. Looking at her, he was suddenly certain that there would be no son for them. Or daughter. Nothing. He had changed her life for worse and no reason at all.


	3. A Storm in Waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your comments!

_Seven years later…_

The day was bright and full of promise, the weather in the last two weeks so constantly rich of sun caress and breath of warmth that many of the royal entourage regretted having only taken winter cloaks. The King and his family, though, were prepared for such eventuality, although Duncan had to admit that it was the women who had made it so. "What?" his father had complained, his eyes growing wide at seeing the number of coffers his Queen had ordered filled. "If the storms stop – which they won't – we'll just wait it off in the clothes we have." Now, he was glad that she had weighed the baggage train with all this because there hadn't been a single storm this far – and plenty of heavy summer fruit that melted in the mouth, leaving the rich aftertaste of sun and pleasure. This year, the apricots were easily as big as fists.

"I have forgotten what the Stormlands are like," Betha sighed. "Over time, I started to think that they were like the North or something. But they're of the south."

The court had not traveled to Storm's End for… could it be fourteen years already? Duncan counted them quickly. Yes. Even at Steffon's birth, Rhaelle and Ormund had traveled to present him at court and not the other way round.

"It's a good omen for reconciliation," Shaera said hopefully. She had spent many a day choosing the best present imaginable for the boy whose fifth nameday they had come to celebrate, enlisting Aerys' help because she placed no trust in men grown's ability to remember what they had liked at five.

"I hope you're right," Betha said and Jenny stirred uncomfortably. She didn't want to be here but her goodfather had decided that the rift within the family had lasted long enough. Duncan wasn't convinced that the best way to mend it was to go over Rhaelle's wish to not have him and Jenny attend but one could not refuse a king. And on the matters of family, this one could be quite determined.

Still, as he stared at the orchards gleaming in golden and crimson at their left, he felt that concern had not left him. Usually, Rhaelle's letters to the Red Keep were extremely bland – formal words that said nothing, as if she had no desires, no personality of her own. They could have been written by the maester at Storm's End, for all the closeness they gave away. But this time, she had broken her code of unfailing politeness and no wishes to ask them for anything to imply, ever so tactfully, that Duncan and Jenny wouldn't be welcome at the celebration.

The odd thing was that this request had not disturbed Duncan nearly as much as his parents. At Steffon's presentation, Rhaelle had been a little less distant and that had been good enough for him. Of course they weren't wanted at Storm's End – it was Jocelyn's old home. She was sure to attend her nephew's nameday. Duncan didn't want to expose her to courtly gossip as an obstacle in his own great love story, so Rhaelle and Ormund's desire to protect her didn't disturb him at all. But Betha had looked sick.

"It will all be fine," she now said optimistically as they set off again after their last stop for a short reprieve before they reached Storm's End.

Jenny didn't look convinced as she followed her in the great wheelhouse.

"Come here," Duncan suddenly said and nodded to a servant hurrying past. "Order my lady's palfrey to be readied and brought here."

Jenny wasn't a good rider and she had never gone quite past her fear of falling but today, she was pleased to ride with him, instead of sharing a wheelhouse with Betha and Shaera and sharing none of their enthusiasm over the upcoming reunion.

"But I don't want to go inside! I want to ride!" Aerys protested as his mother dragged him towards the huge vehicle mercilessly. Now, the road was getting narrow and with the crowds pressing from both sides, it would only take a touch of a hand to infect him with something that there was no cure for. They still didn't know how Duncan's grandfather had come down with the speckled monster but it had certainly happened during a similar procession.

Hearing her brother's protests, Rhaella who up to this moment had looked resigned to her wheelhouse fate, also started complaining; Shaera looked at the Lord Commander simply lifted first Aerys and then Rhaella off the ground and handed them to her. The door shut their displeasure off and Duncan wondered how Jaehaerys and Shaera could take such genuine discomfort in stride. _If they were mine, I would have…_ But he knew that he wouldn't have done anything different. And the children weren't his.

Ormund and Rhaelle came out to greet them a league from the castle walls. Steffon and Ormund's mother were with them and Duncan cursed inwardly as he caught himself looking for Jocelyn – not with the apprehension of putting her through the humiliation of having the broken betrothal brought back to everyone's mouth but something like longing.

She was nowhere to be seen.

Rhaelle's eyes turned cold the moment she saw him, although it only lasted a breath. Stull, Duncan saw her hand sneaking towards Ormund's and him squeezing her fingers in comfort before they came forth to welcome the King and Queen. Duncan looked at the child with them and felt a faint sadness that there was nothing Targaryen about it. All he could see were Ormund's features. Had Rhaelle prayed for a non-dragon son as fiercely as to make it come true?

"He's black-haired like you," Aegon turned to Betha and she smiled but Duncan could see that she was saddened.

Steffon's interest in the King and Queen, however, was quickly drowned when Aerys and Rhaella came forward. Just a little later, the three children were already talking to each other like old friends and when Aerys and Rhaella heard that there were ponies brought for them so they didn't have to go into the wheelhouse again, they whooped with joy and this time, Shaera did not scold them.

"You're the bestest aunt in the whole _world_!" Rhaella proclaimed, staring at Rhaelle with heartfelt gratitude, and Duncan saw how Jenny's shoulders went a little down. Already, she could feel the hostility Ormund's men and women were meeting her with. In the years at court, it had been easy to forget how they had come to be together, for she had been accepted, with or without reserves. She had become part of the Red Keep. But Storm's End was not her place, no more than it was his, and he looked at his father, wondering at his ability to delude himself. Bringing them here would bring no peace… and it didn't.

Rhaelle never asked why Duncan and Jenny had come against her expressed wishes, so their father never had the chance to recite the speech he had undoubtedly prepared in advance. In fact, she often excused herself with her duties arranging the events and everyday life in the weeks of celebration and Duncan had the feeling that while her exhaustion was a very real one, she did not go out of her way to find ways to spend time with her family, although when she did, it sometimes felt like before – especially when Ormund was present and Jenny wasn't. _Are we pretending that things are as they should have been,_ Duncan wondered but he knew that as genuine the attempts of reconciliation might be, on both sides, the past could not just be rewritten. Ormund and Rhaelle should not have been the Baratheon-Targaryen couple.

"I want to hear about every day of your life since you left," their mother said one day in the late afternoon as they sat on a terrace overlooking the road and watched Aerys and Steffon spar in the practice yard, with Rhaella yelling for one… for the other… and then again. The wind carried to them the scent of fresh peaches from the orchards sprawling down a small hill and Duncan's mouth watered. "No matter how insignificant things might look to you, I want to hear all the details."

"I'm sorry," Rhaelle replied after a pause. "I thought your new gooddaughter had filed in for me splendidly."

The Queen sighed. "I'm afraid I didn't envisage such a reaction from you and I should have. I never thought it would cause you suffering… and I should have."

"Yes," Rhaelle agreed. "You should have."

Her voice said something more than the words themselves and while right now, Betha might have made Rhaelle listen, the moment was lost when a stirring in the bailey caught Rhaelle's attention. A cavalcade poured in, a small wheelhouse clambering heavily. From this far and up, Duncan could see that two of the riders were children. A man dismounted and hurried over to help a woman with a babe in her arms to climb down.

Ormund made an impulsive, angry gesture. "Jocelyn," he said, turning to Rhaelle. "Didn't you tell her not to come?"

Lady Margrat's embroidery fell in her lap. She rose but didn't seem to know where to go. Her eyes moved from Ormund to Rhaelle who had gone a little pale. Even Vaella looked concerned; for a moment, Duncan entertained the idea that the old Queen might have been right and Vaella might not be as simple as she was considered to be but immediately rejected it because it was too terrible; stunned, he stared at the distressed group.

"I'll go… to greet her…" Ormund said and left immediately but he and his sister must have missed each other because a little later, Jocelyn burst through the door like a gush of wind. She didn't stop upon entering but headed straight for her mother to leave the babe in her arms and stepped back, shaking her numb arms.

"I'm so sorry I am late," she said apologetically, turning to Rhaelle and not paying attention to anyone else on the terrace. "I…"

Then, she saw the King and Queen and upon recognizing them, sank into a curtsy. "It's a great honour for Storm's End to receive you, Your Graces," she said and Duncan admired her self-possession – right to the moment she lost it upon seeing him. Her eyes shot back to Rhaelle who shrugged apologetically.

"Grandmother!"

With much clamour and hurrying to get there first, three children rushed out on the terrace.

"Where is Steffon?" the oldest boy demanded and Lady Margrat silently pointed at the courtyard – she didn't seem to have the self-possession for more.

As he stepped towards the railing, Duncan saw his mother and father exchange a look of stupefied horror. Shaera gasped.

Duncan already knew what they all saw: him at the age of six.

 


	4. Secrets and Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left a comment! You're keeping me willing to write.

Somehow, Rhaelle had the time to receive Duncan on her own as soon as he asked. He had known that she would. He could also say that unless Storm's End burned, no domestic trouble would make her leave the solar while before, nothing had been minor enough to not warrant her personal input – when she was with any of them.

"For how long have you known?" he asked without bothering to play nice. She didn't react to nicety all this nicely anyway. Not when it came from him.

"From the very beginning," Rhaelle replied. "When Jocelyn announced that she was with child. I had already seen you seeing her off to her chamber one night, you see…"

She spoke without hesitation. She did not stumble. And yet Duncan felt that something between them had changed. She didn't quite look at him. She was a little pale. She did feel guilty and somehow, it infuriated him, made him feel anger that had not been there when he had first come in.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked fiercely. "Do you hate me this much?"

"Once again, you make it all about you!" Rhaelle shot back but it was too late. He had felt her weakness and a beast that he had not known he harboured demanded to be let loose, enraged by all those years he had thought he had betrayed her and it had eaten at him. To see that it was returned, that she had betrayed him as well turned all the guilt into savage fury.

Twilight was slowly descending upon the solar, throwing changing shadows. Some of them lingered longer around Rhaelle, keeping her strangely out of reach. Hurried footfall echoed down the hall but went past the door, not entering. Duncan looked at her. "Do you hate me this much?" he asked in a low, urgent voice. He had considered the possibility many times before but never actually taking it as a valid one. Not before this day. He had ascribed it all to hurt that his sister was entitled to feel – or so he had used to think.

Rhaelle shook her head but he did not believe her. "Why did you hide it from me, then? All those years I've been begging the Seven and Mother's gods to give me a child – and you never told me that they had."

"They didn't!" Rhaelle snapped, now angry as well. "What would you have done if I had told you? Ruined his life? I thought better of you. My fault, I guess. I never learn."

The resentment in her voice had now turned in self-resentment and while just yesterday, it would have made him feel even more guilty, it now only repulsed him. "Ruin his life?" he repeated. "I am a Targaryen, even if you don't want to be one. How could it have ruined my son's life?"

She made no reply. She even stopped turning the sapphires on her wrists this way and that. The brief silence gave Duncan time to compose himself, get his thinking straight, and she was right. What could he have done, announced that the boy was his? That would be worse than even Aegon the Unworthy's deeds, let alone cruel. As things were now, his son would be a lord of a powerful House one day. How could a simple Waters compare?

He might be a Targaryen but he was not the heir of the Iron Throne… He didn't have much to give to a trueborn son and to a bastard, there was nothing to give at all. He was surprised how piercing this realization was, as if he hadn't known before what he had given up.

He took the bottle of wine they had been served and poured himself a solid dose.

"This was the best outcome for everyone," Rhaelle went on. "You could go on with your great romance without being constantly reminded of this one failing."

Was it truly one failing? The crevices in his once so joyful union with Jenny had started appearing long before his unfortunate affair with Jocelyn but it had been quite a while before he had been able to put aside the haunting thoughts of what could have been if Jocelyn had been the way she had eventually become. Now, he felt desperately deprived and the thought that it had been his own fault did not help at all.

"And Jocelyn had what she wanted," Rhaelle finished.

Surely he couldn't have heard right? He stared at her. "She did it deliberately? To get a child out of me?"

Rhaelle seemed to realize that she had misspoken but she couldn't take the words back. Duncan gripped the arms of his chair, horrified by the impulse to grab her and draw the answer out of her. Choke it out of her if need be.

His knuckles turned white.

"It isn't your sister you should be asking."

The voice came from the door; glancing there, Duncan realized that she had slipped in without noticing. From this close and in a dress, rather than a formal gown, she looked exhausted. Still lumpy, somehow. Her eyes were dull and yet Duncan could see nothing but the bundle that she was not holding now, the little life that had taken its toll from her. She did not look ugly to him at all and while he recognized that he should have far more anger for her than Rhaelle, he could summon none.

Jocelyn crossed the solar to them swiftly as Rhaelle rose and removed herself into the distant corner to give them some privacy. "If you have any questions, you should turn to me. There is no reason to harass Rhaelle. And I'd like it if you can tell me where you're going to be at any given day, so I can keep Ronnel away. The resemblance isn't this great, actually, since you're a man grown but I'd rather not take the risk."

She was now talking casually, as if it could all be explained with logic, yet the worry around her mouth remained. Her fingers opened and closed like a cat preparing its claws for a fight.

"So," Duncan asked reluctantly and somewhat fearfully, "it was all a plan? You hoped to get with child and it was no accident?"

Jocelyn circled the table and came close, so she could talk quietly and still be heard. "By that time, my relationship with my husband was very strained. He had had a wife and child before me, so he blamed me for our barren union. He was now grim and foul-tempered – not all the time but often enough."

Had Duncan ever been grim, foul-tempered and accusing to Jenny? He hoped that he hadn't. But he had wanted a child long after he had stopped longing for the Prince Who Was Promised.

"I knew, though, that there was no fault in me. I just knew it. I had almost decided to seek someone else before I left for Tarth… and when I saw your interest in me, I thought it was fate." She shrugged.

He still couldn't believe it. "But I heard you telling Rhaelle that you loved me. You were crying…"

"I was?" she asked and shook her head. "You're mistaken. I don't know whom you heard but at the time, I was terrified that my marriage would fail. I love my husband. I came to love him, after a fashion. But love and desire aren't always enough. A marriage takes many other things to succeed."

Didn't Duncan know it! With a sickening feeling, he realized that he could actually _relate_ to her story. In a way, it was his own. Somehow, with the passage of time, the magic between Jenny and him had faded.

"Even the lie of a child?" he challenged, wondering how he could have misjudged her so badly.

"A lie?" Jocelyn repeated and gave him a look like the one Argella Durrandon must have given Rhaenys Targaryen's men when they had come to demand her surrender. "There is no lie if there is a child. I am a mother of three other children, all by my husband. I am a loyal wife, a good mother. There is no lie."

Her eyes were bright and hard. _That's what Argella Durrandon must have looked like when she refused to open her gates,_ Duncan thought, surprised that he even remembered this bit of distant history.

"Once you made me a mother, I started conceiving from my husband without any trouble. He didn't just want an heir, you know. He wanted children. Many children to replace the one he had lost. And I'm happy to provide them." She paused. "He's the joy of my life, though," she said after a while. "With his birth, my lord once again became the man I wed."

"And you never thought to tell me?" he demanded because it was easier to be angry with her than think what the man must have done to win her trust after the humiliation Duncan had put her through. Had she been already the woman he had met later? Or had Penrose acquired the wife Duncan had rejected – unattractive and self-conscious? Had he made her feel wanted and appreciated, only to take his esteem back over her supposed childlessness?

She stared at him, amazed. "Why should I have?" she asked.

She didn't even want to demean him, Duncan was sure of it, and this unwillingness, this indifference was the final blow. She had used him to snatch a gift to leave at her husband's feet and never thought about him in the aftermath. Never considered that he might be suffering the same cutting of the ties holding a heart bound to a heart in a way that only the absence of child could do. Never wished to make it better for him and not only her. _You were ruthless, Jocelyn,_ he thought. _I humiliated you but you humiliated me even more… I scorned you but you scorned me worse…_ but still he couldn't say it because then, she could say that she knew what longing for a child felt like but he had no idea what being rejected for someone so beneath him in front of everyone was like and to this, he would have nothing to say back.

"I didn't break the betrothal just out of love," he said fiercely because there _had_ been something else as well and now, as he stood staring at his son's mother, the other reason, the prophecy, took hold as the bleak truth that Jocelyn had given him a son who would never take the crown that should have belonged to his father and then him sank deeply, deeply…

"Didn't you?" Jocelyn inquired. "So everyone has misunderstood you? So Ormund lied to me?"

The memory of his trying to explain it to his friend washed over him. He couldn't deny it. "You don't understand, it wasn't like this."

"I don't care how it was," Jocelyn said tiredly. "And I don't see how you care either. You dared bring her to my home, after all."

He felt the blood crawling up his dark cheeks. "It was my father who inisisted…"

"And of course, you could never gainsay your father," she replied sardonically.

Was that how she thought about him? That he had come here, that he had brought Jenny along only to make her feel uncomfortable? Why not? She had not even cared to make him feel uncomfortable. She had turned into a woman with a stone for a heart…

"She wanted to apologize," he said, suddenly appalled at this prospect, Jenny apologizing without knowing that Jocelyn had paid her with the same coin. And Jocelyn was not going to offer any apologies back.

Lady Penrose wasn't impressed. "And here I was thinking she had acquired something like manners. Didn't you teach her that there are some offences that cannot be washed away with words?"

Duncan couldn't believe it. That was the woman who had rushed in the burning stables to save the horses – the living souls? "You mean you would not have accepted it?"

"Of course not. Why should I have? She broke my betrothal."

* * *

To his relief, no one seemed to notice the resemblance. To his relief. He was relieved. He kept telling himself that he was. But Jenny looked at him a few times and just when he was starting to think that she might have noticed something, she asked, "Why are you so happy?"

Happy? She thought he was happy? Had they lost each other so thoroughly?

"There is something you want to tell me," Jenny went on. "You want to tell it to the world. What is it?"

Startled, Duncan realized that she was right. He wanted to jump up, grab the boy who was talking to Aerys and Steffon, throw him high in the air and scream on the top of his lungs, "This is my son!" But of course, he couldn't.

His eyes kept returning to Jocelyn and her husband, the way they shared looks when distracted from their respective conversations, the casual remarks they made about each other. As much as he tried to make out the love, he saw none. Not as he understood it. But they looked content with each other and when they looked at the children, they glowed. That was a bond that could never be broken. He imagined them discussing betrothals, tourneys for the boys, entertainers for the golden-haired girl who looked nothing like Jocelyn and was the spitting image of her father. .. something that he now knew for sure he'd never have. His son was saying something that he could not hear but Lord Penrose laughed when the man at his right mentioned something about spears.

"This was the first weapon he took on his own," he said. "Before he could walk. In fact, I caught him right before he stuck his eye into one… I have no idea who he takes after. Our Dornish master at-arms, most likely."

_No,_ Duncan thought, _he takes after me._ His mother shot him a look that made him wonder just how much she knew of his regrets. And right now, regrets were bearing down upon him like a mountain. He couldn't look at Jenny. Jenny who was a stranger to him in all that mattered. Their perfect love had faded in a court where neither of them was needed, just tolerated. In a life where there wasn't a child to give them something to share. He brought the goblet to his lips but the Arbor gold was more biting than the sourest Dornish red. If he had given Jocelyn more consideration at the time… if he had bothered to meet her after their betrothal… see what she was like behind her reticence… would he have been the one to laugh about his son, with his passion for spears right now?

"We do have some of the best Dornish spears in the Red Keep," the King said. "I'll be happy to send him one."

Duncan saw how Jocelyn's face went white and his anger with her was washed away. Instead, fierce protectiveness came. But he couldn't do anything, despite the palpable waves of dread washing from her towards him – and everyone else. How was it possible that no one noticed? His best effort would be to draw the conversation away from Ronnel. But his father had realized that he had misspoken, and turned to Ormund instead. Duncan settled back, going through the spears in the Red Keep in his head. Many of them had been Baelor Breakspear's and while his father had never let those leave the armoury – like his grandfather hadn't – he wouldn't mind it now. Duncan tried not to imagine how Aerys would react since he had never been allowed to make them his own, just use them. _Well, he'll just have to get used to it,_ he thought resentfully. _He'll have so much, he can spare some things for Ronnel._

Around him, the evening feast went on. People talked and laughed, and shouted to be heard. Youths blessed by the Seven with litheness that boggled the mind, performed series of movements that would surely demand the lack of any bones. And Duncan sat there, feeling as if he had been the one deprived when he had thrown his son's mother away, losing both of them before Ronnel had even been conceived.

"Why did you let me do it?" he demanded three days later, at the first occasion that he and his father were left alone.

Aegon sighed. "Could I have stopped you?" he asked.

"I was just sixteen! I had no idea what I was doing."

What did prophecies and ideals matter? How could a boy of sixteen see what fate held for him? The slow wedge that was inevitable? But Aegon and Betha – they must have known. They must have seen.

"Is that so?" The question was asked with voice of ice. "Would you have felt the same way if Ronnel's mother was not Jocelyn but Jenny?"

All of a sudden, Duncan saw his father with new eyes. Behind the coldness, behind the stern refusal to shoulder any of the responsibility Duncan wanted to shove upon him now, there was grief. A desperate longing. Five children, and just three grandchildren… Aegon was deprived of Ronnel as well.

"I'd like to give something to him," Duncan said, softly now. "But I don't know how. I can't think of any way that won't turn it into offence against Jocelyn."

The King examined him, his face inscrutable. "Despite what she did? You realize how she used you, don't you? That's a woman who doesn't need your protection."

"Don't!" Duncan warned angrily. "Do not speak of her like this."

Aegon stared at him with horror and then sympathy. He thought he understood but he didn't. Everything had always been clear for him. His feelings. His love. He sighed.

"Very well," he said. "I think I do have a solution. I'll ask all the boys in the castle to show me their skills. He'll likely best everyone with the spear – Aerys keeps talking about this incessantly. You can come and watch them – and then you can give him a prize. He'll think he's earned it through his skills, and so will everyone else."

Duncan nodded. Secrets and lies – that was what his strivings and disappointment had reduced him to. He rejected lies instinctively but truth would bring him nothing while the deception might give him a contact, as short-lived as it would be.

 


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented!

_A year later…_

The laughter drove him to anger before it even fully erupted. There was something wrong with this so called knight, with his too big armour, but there was something even more wrong with those who found amusement in the sight. Could they not see the mix of eagerness and despair that was so evident to him? Before he could even think of what he was doing, he was out of his seat, striding towards the unfortunate challenger who was all but invisible in the too big armour. "I will joust you," Duncan announced and the blue eyes inside the helm shot him a look of such gratitude that he felt uncomfortable.

As he donned his armour, he wondered what the knight's game was. He was almost sure that the armour was not his – if it was, he'd look at least somewhat comfortable in it. His father's thoughts seemed to travel down the same path. "Has someone complained of their armour being stolen?" the King asked and Lord Dondarrion assured him that he'd look into the matter.

The first tilt was quite the shock to Duncan. He had expected that the knight would at least be able to lift his own spear but no such luck. Was it a bloody woman under the steel? He had heard much about mad Danelle Lothston and his opponent looked small enough. Was he – she – mad enough to challenge a field for some reason of his – her own?

The second tilt was more of an exploration. At the end of it, Duncan knew that in the next one he had to unhorse the mystery knight, else there would be a real danger for the small body to slid from the horse under the weight of the mismatched armour – and there would be no glory in this. Duncan could already say that without the glory, his opponent might just die.

"Thank you," he told his squire and sipped from the goblet the boy gave him, although he wasn't tired in the least.

He had intended to let the mystery night go, truly, but when he saw him – her? – sprawled in the field, curiosity won over. He circled the partition and helped his defeated rival rise and then, before any resistance could be offered, he grabbed the help. Just as he expected, it tilted like the hat of a drunkard, revealing the flushed face of a…

"How old are you, boy?" Duncan asked amidst the gasps of the crowd and wondered why he hadn't thought about this possibility before. Children didn't even need to be mad to try something like this. All it took was to be… a child.

"Ten, Your Grace," the boy mumbled and Duncan laughed.

"Only ten and yet so bold? Where did you take this armour from?"

The boy looked down, his cheeks turning even a deeper red. "I'll return it," he stated without looking up. "I am no thief! I just wanted to joust."

"That's something the King will relate to," Duncan said. "Come on, I'll take you to him."

The boy looked around wildly, his eyes those of a hunted beast. "To His Grace? No!"

Duncan sighed. "He'll love to see you…"

"No!"

The crowd was now buzzing with excitement, spreading the news that the mystery knight was no knight at all but a boy – a mad one, for sure, but brave. Duncan closed his eyes. What was he doing, playing the great benefactor to make himself look good? Give the singers a theme for another song? Did he think being generous to the boy made him useful? Was it his vanity that made him insist? A pair of blue eyes flashed in front of him. "No," a voice said. "The living souls."

"No," he almost said in turn. "It's him. His eagerness and childish confidence that he's already as good as a knight."

"What?" the boy asked and he realized he must have said something to Jocelyn aloud and not in his head alone.

"What's your name?" he asked and the boy shifted his weight, suddenly ashamed and yet glorying in the cheering of the crowd.

"Barristan," he mumbled.

"Barristan the Bold!" Duncan announced and the ones closest to the field took his shout, repeated it, others took it from them, until all of Blackhaven echoed with those cries.

"Barristan the Bold!"

Yes, in moments like this he did feel as if there was some use of him in the world.

* * *

_Years later…_

He had awaited with half horror and half resignation the day he'd hate Jenny. It was because of his love for her that he had been cheated out of the life that should have been his, the son that should have been his and the love left his heart day by day, its retreat as insidious as its arrival had been thunderous. Only when something happened – a song that had been theirs, a scent that she had not worn in a long time that had once driven him mad with lust – did he realize how farther apart they had drifted. Sorrow came to him, grief for all that had been lost. Hatred was sure to come and he had never felt this expectation as clear as the day twelve year old Steffon returned from a visit home with his cousin, Ronnel Penrose – a younger copy of Duncan in everything but the eyes. Only those were Jocelyn's – those and the collected manners, the habit to listen more than he talked, the way he inclined his head when giving something a serious consideration. Duncan was surprised that he remembered so many of Jocelyn's manners and expressions, that he sought them so eagerly in Ronnel. As much as he tried to hide his interest, it was clear to too many at the high table. Jaehaerys and Shaera tried to hold the conversation but one look at the boy was enough for Jenny to gasp. Duncan's mother simply looked sad. The children looked around, bewildered, not quite understanding why everyone was so grave.

"Is he yours?" Jenny asked him as soon as they retired for the night. He still visited her bedchamber often enough and enjoyed his time there but he had never forgotten Jocelyn's words. _Love and desire aren't always enough. A marriage takes many other things to succeed._ Even love had fled from his marriage and what kept it together was not desire but inevitability and the force of habit. "The Penrose boy," she elaborated when he didn't say anything.

"His name is Ronnel," Duncan said because he wanted to postpone the conversation, even if only for a moment.

She seemed to have read something else in his words because she glared at him. "I don't care what his name is!" she snapped. "How old is he?"

"Just as old as you think he is," he said softly because it was painful to watch her struggle with such a simple thing.

Her mouth trembled and he took no satisfaction in being right about her hurt. "Why?" she asked.

"It was… a moment of weakness," he said but it was not enough. She kept staring at him expectantly. "She was always with Rhaelle and there was this great fire… there was a fire at Storm's End one night. She and I worked together to get the horses out. The living souls, she said."

Jenny looked confused and then her anger seemed to fly away all of a sudden. She took a seat in the nearest chair, both to stay away from him and find some support because her feet would no longer offer that. A sad wonder came upon her tired eyes. "All those years later," she said, "and you hadn't learned a thing."

"What?" he asked, not daring touch her. "What do you mean?"

"You still seek the sorcery – in the world, in the people's words. When you could no longer find it in me, you went straight to the one who could now offer you the charm of turning the ordinary into something magical. The horses. The living souls. Oh you haven't changed!"

Was she right? Duncan supposed that she was… but that wasn't all. He had no intention to tell her that he had taken a liking to Jocelyn before that night. Long before. She had been the perfect queen to his king – a queen who had never come to be. He would have been proud to enter a hall with her on his arm or listen to her opinions about politics and ruling a castle. What use would there be of it? He had chosen Jenny precisely because she had been different, stupidly believing that he could shape her into a perfect queen and still preserve her difference. She shouldn't bear the blame for his miscalculations, especially with him having endlessly assuring her that he wanted her exactly as she was.

It would be cruel to let her know what his mother's son meant to him partly because she was his son's mother – but not only. It was still so hard for her to accept their childlessness. Sometimes, he could swear she was poised to find any potential flaw Aerys might have, out of bitterness for not having a child of her own…

"I'm sorry," he said – and he was. For many more things that she'd ever know. "Truly."

"Who is the father of her other children?" Jenny asked with angry curiosity meant to hurt him. "Do you even know? Or are they all children by different fathers?"

"Stop it!" he snapped. "You won't speak of her like this!"

No one, even Jenny, was allowed to sully Jocelyn. _Especially_ Jenny. But even now, as his anger boiled, for Jenny still couldn't seem to grasp just how badly they had both shamed his betrothed and how deserving they were of whatever slight she decided to throw at them, hatred never came. Instead, a tired indifference took hold. For Duncan, the feeling opposite to love was not hatred. He had loved her with such passion and for so long that hatred would be too close to that. Hatred was emotion and while he still felt guilty for breaking his vows and wanted to spare her the truth, it was his feeling of justice and not the affection that drove him. He was almost glad when she jerked her head towards the door, showing him that for tonight, he wasn't wanted.

* * *

He wondered why people didn't seem to notice. It was his face, his hair, his mannerisms, his choice of weapon. Only the eyes were Jocelyn's. It was so evident and yet, no one ever said a thing.

"Are there any talks about my nephew and his cousin in the practice yard?" he asked his squire a few weeks after Ronnel's arrival, and the boy started an excited tale of how the two boys of the Stormlands had thrashed each other just a few days ago and how, at trying to pry them apart, he had ended up thrashed by both. While this explained Harlan's newly decorated face – all various shades of blue turning yellow – it wasn't what Duncan wanted to hear.

"What do you want to hear?" Shaera asked him bluntly as he danced around the subject. "If they're talking about him being your son? They aren't. And I doubt he'd like it if they did. I've been around him a few times because of Aerys. He adores his family. I know his mother certainly won't like it."

The edge in her voice made him bristle. While at the time, she had been one of the few people supporting his decision to break his betrothal, now her open dislike for Jocelyn was something that he was badly prepared to tolerate. "Have you finished?"

"No," Shaera said but was in no hurry to answer. Instead, she lined the papers on her writing desk carefully before looking at him once again. "People see what they expect to see, brother. And they don't see what their mind dictates that they can't be seeing."

"And what should that mean?" he demanded, incensed at her evasiveness.

"People will never notice the resemblance between the two of you because they'll never forget how you rejected his mother. Who would ever think that you'd ever look at her in this way?"

And just like this, Duncan's hopes of Ronnel ever wondering, ever asking questions, even to himself, turned to ashes. For his son, he'd forever stay someone who had to be treated with the respect due to a prince but stayed away from. The man who had humiliated his mother so badly that no amount of words could win trust, let alone liking. The adoration of the ones he had been good to – like young Selmy – would have to suffice.

It didn't.

* * *

_Years later…_

"The Prince Who Was Promised?" Duncan gasped. _"The Prince Who Was Promised?"_

"You heard me as early as the first time," his father snapped. "Jaehaerys is not to be dissuaded. I suggest that you talk to Jenny's woman."

"I will," Duncan said fiercely. "You can trust me, I will!"

But when he asked Jenny where the small woman was, she told him that she hadn't seen her in weeks. She didn't look troubled, either. Her companion came and went as she pleased.

The Prince Who Was Promised! Duncan was now angry at the prophecy as much as everything else. Couldn't she have told him that the supposed prince would be born from Jaehaerys and Shaera's line? _Before_ he took the creature into account at deciding to wed a girl from the old blood?

No, this wasn't right. He hadn't exactly _asked_ her. He had just assumed that he knew. But the years of disappointments and a life wasted away had taught him to doubt, at least, so he went to his brother.

"That's what I thought years ago," he said, baring himself in front of someone else for the first time in his life. "That was one of the reasons I took Jenny to wife. I believed that the Prince Who Was Promised would be born of our line. And the woman you're now placing your trust with told Jenny that she'd have a part in the future of Westeros… whereupon I assumed that she'd be queen. She never told me otherwise."

Jaehaerys was not impressed. Behind his wheezing, there was an iron determination, a grim resolve. _He knows,_ Duncan thought. _He knows what he's doing to his children – and he believes he's right._ The thought that once, he had been just as convinced made his blood run cold. He couldn't let Aerys and Rhaella's lives to turn in any way like his own!

"She told you the truth," his brother stated. "As I believe she did me. It wasn't her fault that you made the wrong assumptions."

"You're making the wrong assumptions as well! All those years, I've been reading and thinking and I've come to realize that unless a prophecy happens on his own, it's no prophecy at all. If the Prince is meant to be born of their line, leave them to find their own path to each other. By the Seven, do not force them into something they might regret till the end of their days!"

But Jaehaerys would not listen.

* * *

Rhaella grew with child mere months after the wedding neither she nor Aerys desired – and while it made their parents and grandfather smile with anticipation, Duncan tried to drive the fingers of dread reaching from him but tried in vain. Was he the only one who saw the fear behind Rhaella's brave smile and Aerys' constant care of her, as if she were a child herself?

They both were and he felt as if he was the only one who had not forgotten it!

"Rhaella is doing great," Shaera said sometimes and Duncan wondered if the façade of full agreement between her and Jaehaerys wasn't just that – a façade. Had she been opposed to the marriage? With Ronnel's arrival at court, the distance between him and her had grown, for some reason and he no longer knew her intimate thoughts. "She's never indisposed."

Duncan wondered if this much health was the normal state of a woman with child – no, a _girl_ with child – or a lull before a storm.

But he was the only one in their House who experienced any fear, it seemed. And when he heard his father's decision that the child be born at Summerhall, he knew, with certainty that spread through his very blood like a tongue of flame, that Daeron's dreams, Aerion's madness, his own conviction that he had gotten a prophecy right would be followed by something that could turn out to be worse than all of them together. But after all those years of disappointment, the King refused to listen to any protests and being there was the least Duncan could do. Who was he to judge his father's delusions when it had all started with his own? He had to go, even if it meant the death of his.

* * *

**The End**

 


End file.
